FOOD TOURISM AND THE CULINARY TOURIST
___________________________________
A Thesis
Presented to the Graduate School of
Clemson University
___________________________________
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management
___________________________________
by
Sajna S. Shenoy
December 2005
Advisor: Dr. William C. Norman

ABSTRACT
The subject matter of this dissertation is food tourism or tourists’ participation in
`food related activities at a destination to experience its culinary attributes. In addition, the culinary tourist or the tourist for whom food tourism is an important, if not primary, reason influencing his travel behavior, is its focus.
The empirical objectives of this dissertation concerned identifying the underlying dimensions of food tourism, developing a conceptual framework that explains participation in food tourism, develop taxonomy of food tourists by segmenting the tourists based on their participation in food tourism, and finally identifying the variables that predict membership in these food tourist segments. The effect of sociodemographic variables on participation in food tourism, and their association with the food tourist segments were also examined. Further, all the findings were analyzed within the theoretical framework of the world culture theory of globalization and the cultural capital theory. Based on the survey responses of 341 tourists visiting the four coastal counties of
South Carolina, the analyses revealed that food tourism is composed of five dimensions or classes of activities. These include dining at restaurants known for local cuisines, purchasing local food products, consuming local beverages, dining at high quality restaurants, and dining at familiar chain restaurants and franchises. The conceptual variables significant in explaining participation in food tourism were food neophobia, variety-seeking, and social bonding. The sociodemographic variables that effect participation in food tourism were age, gender, education, and income.

iii
Segmentation of tourists revealed the presence of three clusters: the culinary tourist, the experiential tourist, and the general tourist. The culinary tourist was identified as the tourist who, at the destination, frequently dines and purchases local food, consumes local beverages, dines at high-class restaurants, and rarely eats at franchisee restaurants.
In addition, the culinary tourist segment was more educated, earned higher income than the other two segments, and was characterized by its variety-seeking tendency towards food and absence of food neophobia.
The dissertation’s findings highlight the role of diverse culinary establishments
(restaurants, farmer’s market, pubs etc.) that contribute to the food tourist experience, and emphasize the importance of destination marketing organizations and the small and medium enterprises working in tandem. Further, the findings also suggest that destinations targeting the culinary tourism market should articulate the availability of indigenous local dishes, varied culinary cultures and food tourism activities.
The evidence that the fundamental structure of food tourism revolves around the local, along with the presence of eating familiar food at chain and franchisees, as a dimension of food tourism, shows that the dialectics between the local and the global is at play, lending credence to the implications of the globalization theory to the food tourism context. The findings also support the use of cultural capital theory in explaining the culinary tourists, as seen by their possession of the indicators of cultural capital, namely an advanced education, and ‘cultural omnivorousness’ typified by their variety-seeking tendency. TABLE OF CONTENTS
............................................................................................................................ Page
TITLE PAGE ...........................................................................................................

i

ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................

ii

DEDICATION ........................................................................................................

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .....................................................................................

v

CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................

1

1.1 Food and Tourism: What is the Connection? ........................................
1.2. Culinary Tourism as Special Interest Tourism .....................................
1.3 Food Consumption and the Social Sciences ..........................................
1.4 Problem Statement .................................................................................
1.5 Objectives of the Study ..........................................................................
1.6 Research Questions for the Dissertation ................................................
1.7 Delimitations and Limitations ................................................................
1.8 Definitions ..............................................................................................
1.9 Organization of the Dissertation ............................................................

1
4
7
12
13
15
16
17
19

2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT ...........

20

2.1 World Culture Theory of Globalization .................................................
2.2 Theory of Cultural Capital .....................................................................
2.3 Towards a Theory of Tourist Food Consumption ..................................
2.4 Conceptual Development .......................................................................
2.5 Sociodemographic Status and Food consumption .................................
2.6 Synopsis of the Chapter .........................................................................

20
24
29
31
56
60

3. RESEARCH METHODS ..............................................................................

61

3.1 Presentation of the Hypotheses ..............................................................
3.2 Questionnaire construction ....................................................................
3.3 Research Design .....................................................................................
3.4 Data Collection Process .........................................................................
3.5 Statistical Approach to Hypotheses .......................................................
3.6 Synopsis of the Chapter .........................................................................

61
66
78
80
82
89

v
Table of Contents (Continued)
Page
4. DESCRIPTIVE FINDINGS ..........................................................................

91

4.1 Screening of the Data .............................................................................
91
4.2 Profile of the Respondents .....................................................................
93
4.3 Testing for Non-response Bias ...............................................................
98
4.4 Reliability of the Measurement Scales ................................................... 103
4.5 Chapter Summary ................................................................................... 106
5. HYPOTHESES TESTING .............................................................................

107

5.1 Identifying the Underlying Dimensions of Food Tourism ..................... 107
5.2 Identifying the Variables that Explain Participation in Food Tourism ... 116
5.3 The Effect of Sociodemographics on Participation in Food Tourism…… ...126
5.4 Developing Taxonomy of Food Tourists ................................................ 133
5.5 Variables Predicting Membership in Food Tourist Segments ................ 140
5.6 Sociodemographic Status and the Food Tourist Clusters ....................... 147
5.7 Chapter Summary ................................................................................... 151
6. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ......................................................

153

6.1 Review of the Findings ...........................................................................
6.2 Theoretical Implications .........................................................................
6.3 Practical Implications ..............................................................................
6.4 Limitations ..............................................................................................
6.5 Recommendations for Future Research ..................................................

153
168
175
177
178

APPENDICES
Appendix A .........................................................................................................
Appendix B .........................................................................................................
Appendix C .........................................................................................................
Appendix D .........................................................................................................
Appendix E: Survey ............................................................................................
Appendix F ..........................................................................................................
Appendix G .........................................................................................................
Appendix H .........................................................................................................
Appendix I ..........................................................................................................

182
183
184
185
186
192
193
194
195

BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................................................................................

196

LIST OF TABLES
Table ..............................................................................................................................Page
3.1

Twenty-nine Items Generated to Measure Food Tourism

.........................

70

3.2

Items on the Food Neophobia Scale

..........................................................

72

3.3

Items on the VARSEEK Scale

...................................................................

73

3.4

Items and Dimensions on the Hedonic Consumption Attitude Scale

3.5

The Reworded Version of the Modified Involvement Scale to
Measure Enduring Involvement with Food Related Activities

........

75

................

76

3.6

Sample Stratification by Region

................................................................

81

3.7

Survey Administration Schedule

...............................................................

82

4.1

Survey Return Rates

..................................................................................

93

4.2

Number of Respondents by Region of Intercept

4.3

Ranking of the State/ Country (non-U.S.) of Residence of the Respondents .. 95

4.4

Distribution of Respondents by Gender

4.5

Distribution of Respondents by Age Category

4.6

Distribution of Respondents by Education

4.7

Marital Status of Respondents

4.8

Employment Status of Respondents

4.9

Distribution of Annual Household Income of Respondents

4.10

Chi-square Comparisons of First Wave and Third Wave Respondents

4.11

Chi-square Comparisons of Respondents and Non-respondents

4.12

Student’s t-tests Comparisons of Respondents and Non-respondents

........................................

.....................................................

94

96

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96

................................................

97

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97

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98
98

....

100

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102

.......

103

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List of Tables (Continued)
Table

...............................................................................................................Page

4.13

Reliability Coefficients of Scales Used in this Study

................................

106

5.1

Factor Analysis of Items Indicative of Food Tourism

...............................

111

5.2

Label, Summative Mean, Standard Deviation, and Reliability Coefficient of the Five Dimensions of Food Tourism. ...............................................

113

5.3

Correlations Matrix for the Independent and Dependent Variables

117

5.4

Regression Analysis of the Conceptual Variables Explaining Dine Local

... 119

5.5

Regression Analysis of the Conceptual Variables Explaining Drink Local

. 121

5.6

Regression Analysis of the Conceptual Variables Explaining Purchase Local.. 123

5.7

Regression Analysis of the Conceptual Variables Explaining Dine Elite

.... 124

5.8

Regression Analysis of the Conceptual Variables Explaining Familiarity

... 125

5.9

MANOVA Results Displaying the Effect of Age on Participation in Food
Tourism …………………. .......................................................................

128

MANOVA Results Displaying the Effect of Gender on
Participation in Food Tourism …………… .............................................

129

MANOVA Results Displaying the Effect of Education on
Participation in Food Tourism ………….. ...............................................

130

MANOVA Results Displaying the Effect of Income on
Participation in Food Tourism ……….. ...................................................

132

5.10
5.11
5.12

..........

5.13

Mean Scores and SD for Each of the Five Dimensions of the Three Clusters . 134

5.14

Analysis of Variance for Cluster Means on Five Factors of Food Tourism

5.15

Cross-validation of the Three Clusters Using the
Classification Results of Multiple Discriminant Analysis

5.16

Omnibus Tests of Model Coefficients

. 135

.......................

139

.......................................................

140

viii
List of Tables (Continued)
Table

...............................................................................................................Page

5.17

Parameter Estimates Displaying Variables that Separate Culinary Tourist
Cluster from the General Tourist Cluster………………………………………142

5.18

Parameter Estimates Displaying the Variables that Separate
Experiential Tourist Cluster from the General Tourist Cluster

...............

143

Parameter Estimates Displaying the Variables that Separate
Culinary Tourist from Experiential Tourist Cluster .................................

144

Logistic Regression Analysis of the Food Tourist Clusters as a Function of the Predictor Variables ..................................................

145

5.21

Classification of Cases for Each of the Groups

.........................................

146

5.22

Results of Chi-square Test of Association between Gender and the Three Food Tourist Clusters . .............................................................

148

Results of Chi-square Test of Association between Age and the Three Food Tourist Clusters ..............................................................

149

Results of Chi-square Test of Association between Education and the Three Food Tourist Clusters ........................................................

149

Results of Chi-square Test of Association between Employment
Status and the Three Food Tourist clusters ..............................................

150

Results of Chi-square Test of Association between Marital Status and the Three Food Tourist Clusters ........................................................

150

Results of Chi-square Test of Association between Annual
Household Income and the Three Food Tourist Clusters ........................

151

Summary of the Dissertation’s Findings

152

5.19
5.20

5.23
5.24
5.25
5.26
5.27
5.28

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure .............................................................................................................................Page
2.1
5.1
6.1

Proposed Conceptual Framework for Explaining
Participation in Food Tourism ...................................................................
Line Graph of the Mean Scores on each Dimensions of Food Tourism for the Three Food Tourist Clusters

52

...............................

138

The Revised Conceptual Model that Explains Food Tourism . ..................

173

CHAPTER ONE
1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Food and Tourism: What is the Connection?
Consumption is an integral aspect of the tourist experience, with the tourist consuming not only the sights and sounds, but also the taste of a place. Nearly, all tourists eat and dine out. Food is a significant means to penetrate into another culture as “…it allows an individual to experience the ‘Other’ on a sensory level, and not just an intellectual one” (Long, 1998, p.195). Local food is a fundamental component of a destination’s attributes, adding to the range of attractions and the overall tourist experience (Symons, 1999). This makes food an essential constituent of tourism production as well as consumption.
Dining out is a growing form of leisure where meals are consumed not out of necessity but for pleasure, and the atmosphere and occasion are part of the leisure experience as much as the food itself. A recent profile of the tourists by the U.S.
Department of Commerce, Office of Travel and Tourism Industries (OTTI) shows that dining in restaurants was ranked as the second most favorite activity by the overseas visitors to the U.S. (Appendix A) and the number one favorite recreational/ leisure activity by U.S. travelers visiting international destinations (Appendix B).
However, when it comes to tourists, dining out can both be a necessity and a pleasure. While some tourists dine to satisfy their hunger, others dine at a particular restaurant to experience the local food and cuisine, because for the latter these form an

2 important component of their travel itinerary. This makes the study of tourists’ food consumption interesting as well as complex.
The growth of eating out as a form of consumption and the market forces of globalization have made the food products and cuisines from all over the world more accessible. This has stimulated the emergence of food as a theme in magazines (Cuisine,
Gourmet Traveler, Food and Travel), radio shows (Chef’s Table, Splendid Table), and television, particularly cable television, with food shows focusing on travel and travel shows on food. In fact, the popularity of twenty-four hour television channels, such as the
Food Network devoted to food and the place that food comes from, intertwines food with tourism so much that quite often it is hard to determine whether one is watching a food show or a travel show.
Such developments have spurred an interest in experiencing the unique and indigenous food, food products and cuisines of a destination, so much so that people are often traveling to a destination specifically to experience the local cuisines or to taste the dishes of its ‘celebrity chef’ (Mitchell & Hall, 2003). Traveling for food has taken an entirely new meaning from what it used to when voyages were undertaken for spice trade, but voyagers still carried dried food, as the local cuisines were looked upon with suspicion (Tannahill, 1988). The importance of local cuisines to tourists today is demonstrated by the results of a survey of visitors to Yucatan Peninsula where 46% of the meals consumed by the tourists were local cuisines (Torres, 2002).
From an economic point of view, nearly 100% of tourists spend money on food at their destination. Data shows that more than two-thirds of table-service restaurant operators reported that tourists are important to their business, with check sizes of US$25

3 or above coming from tourists (National Restaurant Association, 2002). In Jamaica, for example, the daily expenditure on food by the tourist is five times greater than that of the average Jamaican (Belisle, 1984). According to Pyo, Uysal, and McLellan (1991), among all possible areas of expenditures while traveling, tourists are least likely to make cuts in their food budget. All these suggest that tourists’ food consumption makes a substantial contribution to the local restaurants, dining places, the food industry, and thereby the destination’s economy.
In an increasingly competitive world of tourism marketing, every region or destination is in a constant search for a unique product to differentiate itself from other destinations. Local food or cuisines that are unique to an area are one of the distinctive resources that may be used as marketing tools to get more visitors. This is particularly evident from the studies on wine tourism (Charters & Ali-Knight, 2002; Hall &
Macionis, 1998; Telfer, 2001), which have demonstrated that tourists travel to destinations that have established a reputation as a location to experience quality local products (e.g., Napa Valley in California, Provence in France, Niagara in Ontario, Yarra
Valley in Victoria, Australia).
Countries like Canada and Australia have already begun to target the culinary tourism segment in their marketing strategy promoting local cuisines to their tourists as a main part of their tourism policy. The Canadian Tourism Commission has identified culinary tourism as an important component of the rapidly growing cultural tourism market. So has the Tourism Council of Tasmania. The Council adopted a strategy in 2002 to develop high quality wine and food tourism experiences, events and activities, and a multi-regional approach. This has resulted in longer stays and increased visitor spending,

4 resulting in benefits to the local agriculture and the local economy (Tourism Council of
Tasmania, 2002).
Finally, a relevant example of the economic importance of local food products to tourism is the case of the Southern Seafood Alliance in South Carolina. The organization funded projects, including this dissertation, with the goal of developing strategies to make consumption of South Atlantic wild-caught shrimp an integral element of South Carolina coastal tourism experience. The project’s ultimate objective was to revive the struggling local shrimp industry through tourism.

1.2. Culinary Tourism as Special Interest Tourism
The growth of special interest tourism is seen as a reflection of the increasing diversity of leisure interests of the early twenty-first century leisure society ( Douglas,
Douglas, & Derret, 2001). Post-modern tourism is slowly moving away from the ‘Four
S’s of Tourism’ (sun, sand, sex, and surf), to being a part of an overall lifestyle that corresponds to people’s daily lives and activities (Hobson & Dietrich, 1994). The growth of culinary tourism is seen as an outcome of a trend where people spend much less time cooking, but choose to pursue their interest in food as a part of a leisure experience such as watching cooking shows, dining out and the like (Sharples, 2003).
Leisure researchers have studied special interest tourism like ecotourism (Acott,
Trobe, & Howard, 1998) and wine tourism (Charters & Ali-Knight, 2002) to show how tourists may be segmented based on their activities along the ‘tourism interest continuum’
(Brotherton & Himmetoglu, 1997). The culinary tourist is thus a special interest tourist whose interest in food is the primary reason influencing his travel behavior and falls on

5 the upper end of the food tourism interest continuum. At the same time, eating and drinking being ultimately cultural affairs (Murcott, 1986), the culinary tourist is also a cultural tourist. Thus, the obvious overlap of food as a special interest component as well as a cultural component makes the culinary tourist possibly both a special interest tourist and a cultural tourist.
A survey of Special Interest Tours on the internet demonstrates that there are numerous tour operators conducting culinary tours as well as the more popular wine tours.
An examination of these websites reveals that the culinary tours can be roughly classified into three types. These are: 1) the cooking school holidays, 2) dining at restaurants famous for their local cuisines or their celebrity chefs and visiting food markets, and 3) visiting food producers with tours specifically related to just one product (e.g. coffee plantation tours, tea plantation tours, chocolate lovers tours, the ubiquitous wine tours, and the like). Most culinary tours include a combination of all three types.
The cost of a normal six day cooking school tour can range from US$ 1500 for the more popular destinations like France (Provence), Italy (Piedmont, the Italian Riviera,
Sicily, Tuscany, and Venice), and Spain, to US$ 5000 for South Africa and Australia, which have recently entered the international wine tourism market. These tours usually include demonstrations by celebrity chefs (where the tourist may be a participant), wine tasting at vineyards, and visits to places known for its art, history, and culture. Thus, the cooking school holiday spectrum covers a wide range from rural to urban, field- based to school-based, single commodity to multi–commodity, residential to non- residential, and total holiday to a part of holiday experience (Sharples, 2003).

6
The second type of culinary tours is one where the itineraries chiefly include visiting restaurants, local food producers, and food markets. Though the Californian Napa and Sonoma Valleys and the wine country have recently become extremely popular, other popular destinations for such tours are Spain, Portugal, France, Oaxaca (Mexico),
Morocco and Canada. Other than eating at restaurants known for their distinctive local cuisines, a customized tour, for example, might include olive oil tasting in Italy, cheese tasting in France, and the popular Tapas Tours in Spain. Variations of such culinary tours, for the more adventurous, may include cycling and walkabout gourmet explorations throughout the gourmet regions. For the less adventurous or for the traveler with a lower budget, cities like San Francisco and New York with their ethnic communities such as Little Italy and China Town, offer such experiences within one’s own country or city. In addition, events like Taste of Chicago, where almost a hundred restaurants come together to display their best chefs and the food associated with the city’s ethnic diversity, present a wonderful opportunity for culinary tourism experience.
The third type of culinary tours is the extremely specialized tour pertinent to just one product alone. Examples of these are the Coffee Tours to Costa Rica, Nicaragua,
Peru, Panama, Peru, Brazil, and Ethiopia. Here, the culinary tourists indulge in coffee tasting, or on-site experiences such as coffee picking and sorting, or learn about the history of coffee through guided tours in coffee museums. Similarly, Tea Tours in Sri
Lanka and Japan offer tea plantations as attractions with tea museums dedicated to exhibiting the details of tea cultivation, production and manufacturing, along with tours of tea plantations, demonstrations of tea ceremonies, and tearooms. Another popular product-related tour is the Chocolate Tours of Belgium and Switzerland that offer similar

7 experiences for chocolate lovers. Thus, culinary tourism satisfies the motive of combining love for food and travel.

1.3 Food Consumption and the Social Sciences

Ritchie & Zins (1978) list food as one of the components of cultural tourism, implying that food is representative of a culture. One of the dominant approaches in the social sciences used to explain food consumption is the cultural approach, with the others being the economic and the psychological. Food theorists in the disciplines of anthropology, discursive psychology, and sociology have contributed significantly with their disciplinary perspectives on food consumption.
Anthropology, specifically social anthropology, accounts for the majority of cultural studies on food. The symbolic structuralist perspective analyzes food consumption as a psychological and behavioral system that originates in the human brain and how food transforms from a natural object to a cultural one (Levi-Strauss, 1966). The cultural materialistic perspective of Douglas (1975) examines the role of food as a code conveying information about social events and social relations and the commonalities of the structure of each meal across culture. The discipline of discursive psychology, food semiology in particular, inspects how foods and food preparation rituals of a given society represent a linguistic system, conveying social information that helps create and maintain its social identity (Barthes, 1973).
The sociology of food consumption mostly looks into whether the social patterns of food consumption are shaped by the ‘structure’ of society, or whether they are shaped

8 actively by the actions of the ‘agents’ or members of the society (Germov & Williams,
1999; McIntosh, 1996). In particular, sociological research pertinent to food consumption has dealt with determination of interrelationships between food and cultures (Goody,
1982; Mennell, 1985), food habits as a function of changing environmental, social and ecological conditions ( Mennell, 1992), food consumption as a means of social differentiation (Bourdieu, 1984 (1979); Warde, 1997), and the impact of modernization and globalization on food consumption (Ritzer, 1996,1999; Ritzer, Goodman, &
Wiedenhoft, 2001). According to McIntosh (1996) and Germov and Williams (1999), the theories of globalization and the theories of social differentiation are useful in explaining the trends in modern food consumption.
Food theorists, however, have normally confined themselves to studying consumption patterns within structured environments like the home, family dinners, festivals and restaurants with hardly any reference at all to the tourists. Studying tourists’ food-related activities is unique in that the tourists leave their structured environments, where the demands of the tourist lifestyle prevent them from going through the normal eating rituals thus forcing them to make do with what is available. Structure, which appear as a result of rules governing presentation, varieties and rules of precedence and combination of food (Douglas, 1975; Marshall, 1993) is mostly overlooked by the tourists. The role of food alters in that consumption of food becomes a form of recreation as well as an important component of overall tourist activity and experience.

9
1.3.a Food Consumption and Globalization Theories
The modern macro-sociological theories of globalization have been used to explain the dramatically changing food consumption patterns all over the world.
Globalization has been attributed to the destruction of food related traditions like home cooking and individualized family restaurants while increasing nutritional issues and concerns such as balanced and healthy diet. The world cultural theory, one of the theories of interpreting globalization, defines globalization as “the diffusion of practices, values and technology that have an influence on people’s lives worldwide” (Albrow, 1997, p.88 and “the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as whole”(Robertson, 1992, p.8).
According to this theory, there is a constant struggle between the homogenizing forces of globalization and its oppositional dynamics of heterogenization, and the resistance to the global from the local. So, on one hand, there is the proliferation of chain restaurants, pre-cooked and processed foods, foreign foods, and ethnic restaurants all over the world, resulting in a more ‘globalized palate.’ On the other hand, there is a considerable effort to re-establish and articulate the local food systems, resulting in the continuation or resurgence of the local cuisines (Henderson, 1998; Lang, 1999). The emphasis of the globalization theory is on the dynamics of opposing processes and not on the outcome.
With respect to tourism, even though tourists come across potentially unfamiliar foods to a greater degree at the destination than at home, globalization with its time and space compression has permitted more people to experience ethnic and foreign foods at their home. This begs a question as to how the tourist’s need for novelty, change, and the

10 exotic is satisfied, when diversity is being supplanted by uniformity, predictability, and familiarity. Furthermore, with dining becoming a recreational tourist activity and destinations marketing local food as a tourist attraction, the concept of globalization questions the strength of the classic hypothesis of tourist seeking experiences not available in daily life (Richards, 2002). Thus, there is a quandary in the impact of globalization for tourism in that as foodways become global, there is a problem for destinations promoting tourism to stress the uniqueness of their local cuisines to those who can taste the same at home.
The globalization theory of world culture (Robertson, 1992), which encompasses the homogeneity versus the heterogeneity dispute (Robertson, 1995) and the significance of the local as an essential ingredient of the overall globalization process (Robertson,
1997), theorizes how globalization is actually presenting people with diverse experiences despite the convergence in tastes. The emphasis on eating the cuisine where it is native rather than the processed food via franchising worldwide, the growing resurgence of the local through resistance movements like the Slow Cities and Slow Food which offer the tourists a taste of ‘real’ local food, are all example of the dialectical relationship between globalization and localization. The globalization theory is hence employed in this dissertation to analyze the role of macro-structural forces in explaining food tourism.

1.3.b Food Consumption and Theories of Social Differentiation
While theories of globalization explain how structural forces operating on a macro-level influence our consumption, the theories of social differentiation explain consumption patterns on the micro-level. The theories of social differentiation examine how food is

11 used as a means to maintain and establish hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, social distinction, and self-identity, thereby reinforcing symbolic boundaries and conveying social information. Cultural capital theory (Bourdieu, 1984), a theory of social differentiation, has been often used by sociologists (Germov & Williams, 1999;
McIntosh, 1996; Warde, 1997; Warde & Martens, 2000) to explain why different patterns of consumption exist within a society.
Cultural capital theory treats the physical necessity of eating as a cultural practice, and food as one of the cultural resources by which people maintain a symbolic distance, social stratification, and quite often even social exclusion. Cultural capital is not the prerogative of the rich and the elite, who are endowed with economic capital, but it is transmitted through: 1) endowed or symbolic form as internalized culture, 2) objectified form in material objects and media, and 3) institutionalized form like education and degree certificates. With respect to food, possession of cultural capital is manifested in a refined sense of taste and a quest and appreciation for obscure local, regional foods and distinctive cuisines that suggest cultural heritage (Pietrykowski, 2004).
The cultural capital theory (Bourdieu, 1984), with its underlying assumption about developing familiarity, interest, involvement and knowledge about certain cultural products as a means to maintain social stratification systems, is proposed as an explanation of the emergence of food tourism and the culinary tourist. Eating is more than just a biological act, and the tourist deploys as well as accrues cultural capital by participating in food tourism, with food being a source of pleasure, as well as a cultural resource. 12
Tourism researchers have stressed the importance of analyzing the tourist both at the micro–level as well as at the structural macro-level for the theoretical framework to be relevant and to provide a broader social context to explain tourist experiences
(McGehee, 1999; Pearce, 1993; Sharpley, 1999). Food theorists in sociology have also stressed on the need to study food consumption, combining both the macro and microlevel (Germov & Williams, 1999; McIntosh, 1996). Using this approach to the theoretical framework, the current investigation uses the macro-sociological theory of globalization and the micro-sociological theory of cultural capital as the two overarching theories to understand and explain food tourism.

1.4 Problem Statement
In the book Food Tourism around the World, Mitchell and Hall (2003) state:
“Studies of consumer behavior in the area of food tourism are rare and, as a result, the picture we have of the food tourist, is at best sketchy, and considerable amount of research is required to understand food tourism consumer behavior more effectively. To date the material that does exist has been borrowed from more general tourism studies or has been inferred from studies not directly related to tourism” (p.80).
This quote illustrates the relevance of the current investigation to the tourism literature.
Empirical evidence of the culinary tourist and activities that constitute food tourism is difficult to locate, although there are anecdotal references in the literature connecting food and tourism. Food has been viewed as a necessary element of survival, and probably as a component of another attraction such as food in festivals, but has

13 hardly been studied as an attraction or as a tourist recreational activity by itself (Smith,
1983). Food and dining is typically lumped together with accommodations in an assemblage of tourism statistics (Selwood, 2003). In general, food has been the overlooked, unsung component and largely a terra incognita of tourism research.
Studies in tourism where food has been the focus of research have mainly been case studies (Boniface, 2003; Hall, Sharples, Mitchell, Macionis, & Cambourne, 2003;
Hjalager & Richards, 2002; Telfer & Hashimoto, 2003) and ethnographies (Long, 1998,
2004). These studies have contributed to the field by providing analysis of the relationship between food and tourism with practical examples of success stories of cities and countries that have used culinary tourism as a positioning strategy. In addition, they have attempted to define the parameters within which to study food in tourism. However, the data that is available on food-centric tourism activities is disparate and owes its origin to unrelated range of sources.
Thus, there is a need for conceptually based research set in a positivistic paradigm within the framework of social sciences that empirically examines food tourism and identifies the characteristics of culinary tourist. The obvious lacuna that exists in terms of research that specifically examines food in tourism needs to be addressed. This dissertation contributes to that end.

1.5 Objectives of the Study
For the purposes of this dissertation, food tourism is defined as tourist’s food related activities at the destination, such as dining, purchasing local food products, and experiencing the characteristics of a unique food-producing region. In addition, the

14 culinary tourist is defined as the special interest tourist whose major activities at the destination are food-related and for whom food tourism is an important, if not primary, reason influencing his travel behavior.
The goals of this dissertation are two-fold. The first objective is pertinent to food tourism. It is concerned with identifying the underlying dimensions of food tourism.
Drawing from tourism literature that focuses on food, a conceptual framework is proposed and tested to identify the concepts that explain participation in food tourism.
The second objective concerns the culinary tourist market segment. It involves classification of tourists based on their participation in food tourism and identification of the culinary tourist. Finally, the variables that predict membership in the food tourist segments are determined.
Further, using theoretical pluralism, this dissertation combines the theoretical framework of globalization and cultural capital to understand food tourism. However, the purpose of this dissertation is not to test the two theories, but to use them as overarching theories to explain food tourism. The theoretical and empirical objectives of the dissertation are outlined as follows:
Theoretical Objectives:
1. To understand how the world culture theory of globalization and the cultural capital theory together contribute to the explanation of food tourism.
Empirical Objectives:
1. To determine the underlying dimensions of food tourism;
2. To formulate and test a conceptual framework to identify the variables that explain participation in food tourism;

15
3. To examine the effect of the sociodemographic variables on participation in food tourism; 4. To develop a taxonomy of tourists based on their participation in food tourism;
5. To identify the variables that predict membership in the food tourist clusters;
6. To examine significant association between sociodemographic variables and the food tourist clusters.

1.6 Research Questions for the Dissertation
The research questions that arise out of the empirical objectives of the dissertation are stated next:
1. What are the underlying dimensions of food tourism?
2. What variables explain participation in food tourism?
3. Are there any differences in participation in food tourism with respect to age, gender, marital status, occupation, education, annual income?
4. Can tourists be segmented into homogenous groups based on their participation in food tourism?
5. What variables predict membership in each of the food tourist clusters (arrived at as a result of the classification of tourists based on their participation in food tourism)? 6. Is there an association between the food tourist clusters and age, gender, marital status, occupation, education, and annual income of the tourists?
Propositions are developed and stated for each of these research questions in
Chapter Two along with the literature review, which provides a conceptual foundation for

16 the dissertation’s hypotheses. The hypotheses are presented in Chapter Three. The outcome of the hypotheses testing is finally explained within the framework of the two theories in Chapter Six.

1.7. Delimitations and Limitations
The dissertation is subject to following delimitations:
1. The dissertation is delimited to tourists visiting the four coastal counties of South
Carolina;
2. The dissertation does not take into account the amount of money spent by the tourists on food and food-related activities;
3. The dissertation is limited to tourists vacationing during the summer season only;
4. The dissertation does not explore and identify the primary travel motivations of the tourists with respect to food, and limits itself to tourists’ participation in food related activities.
5. The dissertation limits itself to being an empirical generalization and does not test any theory/ theories.

17
1.8 Definitions
Tourism: According to Mathieson and Wall, 1982 “The temporary movement of people to destinations outside their normal places of work and residence, the activities undertaken during their stay in those destinations, and the facilities created to cater to these needs” (Gunn, 1988, p.2).

Food Tourism: The tourist’s food related activities at a destination, such as dining, purchasing local food products or food pertinent products, and experiencing the characteristics of a unique food-producing region.

Special Interest Tourism: When satisfying particular leisure pursuit or interest is the major motive influencing travel behavior and sometimes even selection of a destination for pleasure travel.

Culinary Tourist: A special interest tourist, whose major activities at the destination are food-related, and for whom food tourism is an important, if not primary, reason influencing his travel behavior.

Cultural Tourism: Visiting a place with a motivation to explore and immerse intentionally to learn about aspects of culture like customs, arts, heritage, and lifestyle in an informed way. 18
Other: “the anthropological notion of humans defining the world according to their own socially constructed perceptions of reality, perceptions that divide the world into the known and the familiar as opposed to the unknown or the other” (Long, 2004, p.23)

Foodways: The culinary culture of a region or a country that includes its cuisines, the eating practices of its people, and its culinary history and heritage.

Globalization: Combining the definitions of Robertson (1992 p.8) and Albrow (1997,
p.88) “Diffusion of practices, values and technology due to spatio–temporal compression of the world, resulting in the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole.”

Cultural Capital: The accumulation of knowledge of cultural practices, its symbolic mastery, and the ability to perform tasks in culturally acceptable ways and participate in high culture events.

Structure: The social force that determines the way the society is organized through social institutions and social groups, resulting in predictable patterns of social interaction.

Agency: The ability of people, individually and collectively, to influence their own lives and the society in which they live.

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1.9 Organization of the Dissertation
Chapter One presented an introduction to this dissertation, discussed the role of food in tourism, and the emergence of the niche travel market of culinary tourism. It briefly discussed the relevance of the theories of globalization and cultural capital in explaining food consumption, and their potential in explaining food tourism. In addition, the problem statement, the objectives, the research questions that arise out of the objectives of the dissertation, the key terms, delimitations and limitations were defined.
In Chapter Two, the theories of globalization and cultural capital are reviewed.
Next, the literature where the twin themes of food and tourism intermingle is reviewed with an aim to answer the research questions that were presented in Chapter One. At appropriate points in the text, the major propositions arrived at after the literature review are presented and finally summarized as the conceptual framework that explains participation in food tourism.
Chapter Three presents the hypotheses for each of the research questions of the dissertation, discusses the methodology employed for the current dissertation, and presents the operationalization of the variables. Chapter Four reports the descriptive results of the research. Chapter Five discusses the results from the testing of conceptual framework and the segmentation of the tourists, and other hypotheses.
Chapter Six concludes the dissertation by summarizing the findings, discussing their implications, and offering suggestions for further research.

CHAPTER TWO
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
AND
CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT
This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section reviews the two main theories of consumption, the world culture theory of globalization and the cultural capital theory, to offer a theoretical explanation for tourist food consumption. The second section demonstrates how the review of tourism literature that focus on food resulted in the formulation of the research propositions and a conceptual framework that explains participation in food tourism. In the final section, the relevance of socioeconomic and demographic status in tourist food consumption is reviewed. At appropriate points in the text, assumptions and major propositions underlying the dissertation are presented.

2.1 World Culture Theory of Globalization
Globalization theories are theories of modernity and are significant in explaining the development of the new means of consumption (Ritzer, 1996, 1999). There are different perspectives on globalization theory, with the three main interpretations of globalization in the field of sociology being: 1) the world culture theory, 2) the world system theory, and 3) the world polity theory. Since this dissertation views food as a cultural component, the world culture theory of globalization is used as a means of understanding tourists’ food consumption.

21
The term globalization was first used around 1960 to connote something that is happening worldwide (Waters, 1995). Economics, business, technology, politics, culture, and environmental studies have used this term from different perspectives and with different definitions. Sociologists have defined globalization in the following ways:
“…diffusion of practices, values and technology that have an influence on people’s lives worldwide” (Albrow, 1997, p.88);
“…spatio-temporal processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents” (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999, p14), and
“…interconnectedness of the world as a whole and the concomitant increase in reflexive, global consciousness” (Robertson, 2001, p.8).
According to world culture theory of globalization (Robertson, 1992), the process of globalization operates independent of societal and other socio-cultural processes though it has an impact on them. Movement of religious ideas, money, tourism, food and technology exist globally, breaking old social orders and enabling new solidarities.
Though the popular notion is that the there is an economic causality (through transnational corporations) to the globalization process, Robertson (1992) theorizes that there is no single driving force to globalization. Different forces such as religion, culture and technology have been dominant causal forces in the process of globalization at different times throughout the history of humanity.
An important theme of world culture theory of globalization is that globalization is not a monolithic concept but has a multidimensional aspect to it. It is a complex mixture of homogenization and heterogenization. People interpret globalized goods and

22 ideas in a variety of ways and incorporate them into their lives in diverse ways. There is a tension between the global and the local. These result in societies either incorporating the global, or annexing the global selectively to suit the local by what economists and sociologists term as ‘glocalisation,’ or by sometimes rejecting it, as manifested through the resurgent affirmation of local identities (Robertson, 1997). Relatively few products are sold in a globally standardized form, as most are modified to suit to the local culture, values and tastes.
To summarize, the stress upon the local and the dynamics of the local’s interaction with the global is the hallmark of the globalization theory. Globalization is thus neither a civilizing nor a destructive force, and is quite often a consequence of modernity. Its impact across countries and time has been haphazard, discontinuous and even contradictory.
The World Culture Theory of Globalization and Food Consumption
Sociologists studying food consumption (Germov & Williams, 1999; McIntosh,
1996) have used the world culture theory of globalization to explain the patterns of modern food consumption. The theory when applied to food consumption reflects the same dynamics in that there is dialectical relationship between the global and the local, and convergence as well as divergence of tastes.
With respect to food consumption, the homogenizing aspect of globalization has been attributed to economic forces, particularly because the economic process of trade liberalization makes it possible for food to be sourced from any part of the world. In addition, the most powerful reason for the convergence of tastes has been attributed to the role of food corporations, making branded food products, recipes, and ready-to-eat

23 processed foods available throughout the world (Lang, 1999; Nygard & Storstad, 1998;
Sklair, 1991). The flow of tastes has predominantly been from the overproducing western nations to the south, infiltrating the more regionally self-reliant markets (Lang, 1997).
Even though the west has adopted many immigrant foods, the foods that have been adopted have been mostly transformed and popularized in their processed and ready-toeat form to such an extent that centuries old diets in many countries are being altered
(Barnet & Cavanagh, 1994).
This standardization of tastes, although stimulated in the economic sphere, results in cultural phenomena with certain images and symbols accepted the world over as aesthetics / lifestyle (Sklair, 1991). The example of a young French population increasingly getting attracted to foods served at international franchisees and chains
(Fantasia, 1995) is often cited as an example of how a country such as France, which is generally perceived as culturally insular, cannot escape from the overall trend of globalization of tastes.
Even though globalization has been accused of suppressing regional food differences, major local and regional variations in our eating patterns remain. The world culture theory of globalization (Robertson, 1992) attributes this to the tension that exists between the global and the local. The opposition and public protests to the fast food chains such as McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken in many parts of the world are prime examples of such dynamics. Even western countries like Australia have small communities and towns fighting for Mac-free zones (www.mcspotlight.org/campaigns/ current/residents/index.html). 24
Further, the significance of the local as an opposing force to the global is also seen in the movements like the Slow Food Movement in Italy and many small communities of Europe and the USA. In many western countries, extensive efforts are being undertaken by local communities to reconstruct and emphasize local food systems to protect their endangered gastronomic traditions (Henderson, 1998; Mayer & Knox,
2005; Stille, 2001). Thus, even though Mennell (2000) states that globalization is facilitating a trend of ‘diminishing contrasts and increasing varieties,’ the dynamics of globalization ensures that regional and national differences still exist and there are still more differences than varieties (Nygard and Storstad, 1998).
To summarize, the counteracting forces of globalization and localization act simultaneously leading to people becoming familiar with foods and cuisines from different parts of the world and being introduced to a variety of local versions. This has resulted in convergence in consumptive behavior on one hand and increased variety on the other.

2.2 Theory of Cultural Capital
While theories of globalization explain how macro level forces influence the modern consumption, other forces obviously function. According to Germov and
Williams (1999), “…while the social structure clearly affects the production, distribution, and consumption of food, a sole focus on structural determinants obscures the agency of the people and the counter trend away from rationalization, represented by the concept of social differentiation”(p. 303).

25
The cultural capital theory (Bourdieu, 1984) is one such theory of social differentiation that explains differences in consumption across groups in terms of tastes, pleasures, and desires (Warde, 1997). Warde, Martens, and Olsen (1999) define cultural capital as “the cultural knowledge, competence and disposition, identified through embodied traits, educational qualifications, material possessions, and involvement in cultural practices” (p.125). The theory views culture as complex rule-like structures that constitute resources that can be put to strategic use, as opposed to the view of culture as the values that suffuse aspects of belief, intention, and the collective life (DiMaggio,
1997; Hays, 1994).
According to Bourdieu (1984), class hierarchy is based on a combination of wealth and education. An individual’s combined returns from these two determine his or her class position. The class positions generate different experiences, determine cultural choices, and generate internal commonalities and a system of shared preferences, norms, and symbols. The rich elites and the educated elites maintain exclusivity through their preference for certain genres and forms of non-material culture (visual art, music and literature) and material cultures (food, clothing, furniture).
However, people rich in economic capital may not necessarily be high in cultural capital because even though they value the arts, they may lack the capability to appreciate varied cultural arts. Studies that have empirically tested the cultural capital theory have attested this by demonstrating strong correlation between education level and the knowledge and ability to appreciate varied cultural activities like music, visual arts, literature, cuisines, movies, and other leisure practices (DiMaggio, 1982; DiMaggio &
Mohr, 1985;Gartman, 1991; Glynn, Bhattacharya, & Rao, 1996; Katz-Gerro & Shavit,

26
1998; Ostrower, 1998; Wilson, 2002) . The reason given for this relationship is that education transmits culture inter-generationally in the form of dispositions, tastes, and knowledge, in the sense that once preferences evolves, these are maintained from one generation to another in large measure by educational reinforcement (DiMaggio & Mohr,
1985; Holt, 2000).
This focus on class and the way cultural capital passes on inter-generationally makes the theory of cultural capital static in nature, and sociologists studying consumption (Adema, 2000; Erickson, 1996; Katz-Gerro & Shavit, 1998; Warde,
Martens, & Olsen, 1999) have criticized the cultural capital theory for that reason.
According to them, the emphasis on class is too narrow to cover the dynamic diffusion of objects of consumption. In addition, the theory underestimates the role of social network diversity and other complex modern social structures that contribute to cultural capital
(Erickson, 1996). This makes the cultural capital theory, a theory of reproduction of status. Featherstone's (1991) statement that “…we are moving towards a society without fixed status groups in which the adoptions of styles of life, which are fixed to specific groups, have been suppressed” (p.83), provides an apt criticism of the cultural capital theory. With this criticism in mind, recent studies on cultural capital theory have looked into the stratification of consumption and differentiation in tastes as a product of lifestyle choices (Adema, 2000; DiMaggio, 1987; Erickson, 1996; Katz-Gerro and Shavit, 1998;
Lamont, 1992; Warde, 1999). According to these studies, people rich in cultural capital are those who are knowledgeable about a wide variety of cultural practices, understand the relevance and rules of these practices and can use these as a conversational resource.

27
These culturally varied people are known as cultural omnivores (Peterson, 1992) and they characterize the modern cultural consumption. According to Erickson (1996), “It is not a hierarchy of tastes (from soap opera to classical opera) but a hierarchy of knowledge
(from those who have little knowledge about soap opera or opera to those who can take part in a conversation about both)” (p.219) that determines one’s cultural capital and its possession. One of the major weakness of the cultural capital theory is that too many variables denote cultural capital (DiMaggio & Mukhtar, 2002; Kingston, 2001) and there is no consensus on its operationalization. It has been operationalized as knowledge about cultural art forms, participation in cultural art forms, involvement in cultural arts, and sometimes even as the degree of appreciation of the arts.
Cultural Capital Theory and Food Consumption
According to Mattiacci and Vignali (2004), “…from the birth of nouvelle cuisine onwards, there has been a growing trend towards considering food as an intellectual experience, together with exploration and rediscovery, love for history and culture, search for traditional identity and, at the same time, for something new.” (p.704)
The cultural capital theory uses a similar perspective with respect to food and views eating as a cultural act. The culinary field functions like other domains of ‘high’ culture and art such that there is a hierarchy of cuisines and hierarchy of food outlets and there are group of professional practitioners and critics engaged in aesthetic discourse about restaurants and their dishes (Warde, 2004). The cultural capital theory revolves around the differential ability to control the definition of what is ‘good to eat.’

28
According to this theory, ‘taste’ becomes a social issue when the meal distances itself from its function of satisfying hunger and transforms into a social form or a means of interaction. The function expected from food is indicative of one’s cultural capital.
Those low in cultural capital demand substantial meals with a taste for things that are functional and non-formal. Those high in cultural capital, on the other hand, abandon substance in favor of form and are committed to the symbolic. Thus, the principle governing these differences in tastes in food is the opposition between the “tastes of luxury (or freedom) and the tastes of necessity” (Bourdieu, 1984, p.198).
As stated earlier, the ‘cultural omnivore’ perspective of cultural capital views the breadth of knowledge about various cultural forms and practices as cultural capital. With respect to food, cultural capital may reside in knowledge about gourmet foods, exotic flavors, foods that are acquired tastes, and familiarity with advanced preparation techniques (Adema, 2000). In addition, the growing popularity of cooking shows, a concern for where the food originates from, a desire to resist the dominant culture of franchised food and restaurants, and the quest for obscure local and regional cuisines and artisan-produced foods are all indicative of cultural capital (Pietrykowski, 2004; Warde,
2004).
Empirical studies on cultural capital and food have studied dining patterns in restaurants extensively (Erickson, 1996; Warde et al, 1999; Warde, 2004). According to these studies, ethnic restaurants are the hotbeds for accruing as well as deploying cultural capital and “…the appeal of ethnic cuisines other than one’s own is symbolic in that it links specialized knowledge with a cosmopolitan orientation” (Warde et al, 1999, p.123).
As for the foods served at franchisee restaurants, even though their consumption cuts

29 across social classes, fast food chains are so standardized that their conversational possibilities end quickly and are therefore not frequented by people with high cultural capital (Erickson, 1996). Thus, “distinction is conferred through selection of both places to eat and of dishes” (Warde, 2004, p. 23), which results in members of different social classes systematically picking certain foods and restaurants in preference to others, thereby displaying class differences in a recognizable form, facilitating cohesion and social exclusion among its possessors
To sum up, cultural capital theory is a theory of stratification, which lays the claim that consumption of food is a socially constructed affair. People accrue cultural capital by extending their knowledge, involvement, and familiarity with wide variety of foods and cuisines, especially the non-standardized foods that symbolize refinement, consequently resulting in their social exclusion.

2.3 Towards a Theory of Tourist Food Consumption
Though this dissertation does not seek to test any theory, a discussion on globalization, cultural capital and the tourists’ food consumption is helpful in understanding food tourism. Combining the macro theory of globalization and the micro theory of cultural capital to explain food tourism, a theoretical framework is proposed in this section.
The dynamics of world culture theory of globalization (Robertson, 1991, 1992) are at play in the tourist food consumption. On one hand, the homogenizing forces of globalization are at play, as evidenced by popularity of consumption at franchised fastfood outlets and chain restaurants among tourists in the case studies of Caribbean islands

30 and Yucatan peninsula (Belisle, 1983,1984; Torres, 2002). On the other hand, the counter trend against homogenization is seen in the successful strategic alliances of Niagara region (Telfer, 2001), and Mallorca (Alcock, 1995) where efforts on the part of destinations to promote local food boosted tourism and the local economy. The forces of globalization have exposed people to foreign foods at home, made them less wary of the food of foreign foods, and stimulated them to experience those foods when they travel.
Moreover, the presence of both local food, and the global in the form of chain restaurants, provides them with more variety than ever.
However, the level of exposure to the foreign foods and cuisines at home depends on one’s position in the socio-cultural echelon. Extrapolating from the cultural capital theory, tourists who possess the cultural capital to appreciate and enjoy foreign food at home are the ones who are more likely to experience the local food at the destination
(Cohen & Avieli, 2004). By ordering a particular dish, pronouncing it the way the natives pronounce, and dining at places that are not ‘touristy’ but are frequented by locals, they show cultural competence rather than adventurousness (Molz, 2004; Richards, 2002).
Since cultural omnivorousness is characteristic of people with high cultural capital, tourists who possess cultural capital frequent places of all types and derive as much satisfaction from consuming peasant foods, as they do from eating at high quality restaurants. More importantly, since eating out is a necessary element of the vacation experience, and almost all tourists eat out, destinations become a playground for accruing as well as deploying one’s cultural capital. Where the tourist eats and what he eats exhibits the socio-cultural echelons he belongs to, and makes food an ideal tool for social cohesion and social stratification.

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2.4 Conceptual Development
This section presents the conceptual foundations of the dissertation. Prior tourism literature that focused on food is reviewed with an aim to delineate the activities that constitute food tourism and understand its characteristics. Next, the concepts that literature suggests are significant in explaining food tourism are located in order to develop a conceptual model.

2.4.a Food Tourism
The lack of empirical studies with respect to food tourism calls for a detailed discussion of literature that has focused on this form of tourism in order to describe food tourism. In the literature where one sees the interface between food and tourism, food tourism as a form of tourism makes its appearance as gastronomic tourism (Hjalager & Richards,
2002; Zelinsky, 1985), culinary tourism (Long, 1998) and food tourism (Hall & Mitchell,
2001; Hall, Sharples, Mitchell, Macionis, & Cambourne, 2003). These different terminologies connote almost the same notion, i.e. tourists’ participation in food related activities, with food being the focus of travel behavior rather than a by-product.
Gastronomic Tourism
According to Zelinsky (1985) eating at ethnic and regional cuisine restaurants is a form of gastronomic tourism, implying that a person need not be a tourist in the conventional sense to take part in food tourism. However, Zelinsky’s study is limited in its approach in that it confines itself to just one activity: eating at ethnic restaurants. The

32 study’s contribution to the literature lies in being the first to identify and define this form of tourism, thus laying the foundations for future research.
Culinary Tourism
Long (1998) uses an anthropological perspective and defines culinary tourism as
“…an intentional, exploratory participation in the foodways of an ‘Other,’ participation including the consumption or preparation and presentation for consumption of a food item, cuisine, meal system, or eating style considered as belonging to a culinary system not one’s own”(p.181).
What is noteworthy about the definition is its similarity to the idea conceived by
Zelinsky (1985), the key characteristic being that one need not travel to a place away from home to be a culinary tourist. According to Long (1998), a culinary tourist’s participation in the foodways of the ‘Other’ is either ‘intentional’ or ‘exploratory’ or both
‘intentional and exploratory.’ This implies that culinary tourist may be positioned on a continuum from low to high based on interest, curiosity, and intention.
Long (2004) posits that the culinary ‘Other’ can be classified into five categories: culture, region, time, ethos/ religion, and socio-economic class (p.24). The first category of culinary tourism is based on the cultural ‘Other.’ This refers to experiencing foodways of ethnicities not one’s own. The cultural other is the most frequent category in which culinary tourism is enacted, and represents the common notion of culinary tourism.
The culinary tourism based on the regional ‘Other’ refers to experiencing a food system that is physically removed from one’s own. Thus, geography plays a considerable part in this category of culinary tourism. The concept of the terroir, that is, the combination of the local soil, the physical environment and the local culture that makes

33 the local produce and the cuisine unique to the region, plays a significant role here. So much so that sometimes the local produce becomes iconic of the region alone. A classic example of this is Maine lobster, which though being a part of the Maine coast has become symbolic of the state (Lewis, 1998), and is an integral part of the Maine tourist itinerary. The third category of the culinary ‘Other’ is that of experiencing foodways that are separated by time, both historic and futuristic. Activities for this type of culinary tourism would include visiting an attraction where one could savor historic reenactments of feasts from a different era, sampling foods of the past and food products like heirloom tomatoes, watching demonstrations of old style cooking, buying cookbooks with recipes from the past, and sampling “futuristic foods” (p.184).
The fourth category of the culinary ‘Other’ is experiencing the culinary ethos that is not one’s own. Examples of this would be experiencing foods cooked for a religious dietary requirement (e.g. Ramadan food, Hallal, and Kosher food), church festivals, foods cooked with respect to belief systems like vegetarianism, vegan, and foods cooked using organically grown local produce.
The final category of culinary ‘Other’ is the socio-economic other. Examples include dining at an upscale restaurants, attending a gourmet cooking class, or experiencing lower class cuisines like mountain foods, Southern working class food, down-home diners, home cooked plain food of the middle class that is served at the mom and pop’s outlets, and buying “White Trash cookbooks” (p.184).
The sites for participation in culinary tourism, according to Long (1998), include restaurants, ethnic restaurants, festivals, festive food events especially dedicated to a

34 particular produce like apple, peach, pumpkin, shrimp, oysters and the like, and cooking demonstrations using home grown, freshly picked product at community festivals.
Long’s (1998) study thus contributes to the understanding of culinary tourism in three ways. For one, it defines culinary tourism. Next, it demonstrates that culinary tourism is composed of different categories of activities, implying that culinary tourism is multidimensional. Finally, it shows that there are, in fact, multiple sites for participating in culinary tourism. This seminal work, though influential in defining the parameter of food tourism, is more of an anthropological discourse and lacks empirical analysis.
Food Tourism
An opertionalizable definition of food tourism, and a much more extensive work, comes from Hall and Mitchell (2001) and Hall and Sharples (2003). According to Hall and Sharples (2003), food tourism is “visitation to primary and secondary food producers, food festivals, restaurants and specific locations for which food tasting and/or experiencing the attributes of specialist food production region are the primary motivating factor for travel” (Hall & Mitchell, 2001, p.10). Thus, they narrow the scope of food tourism by stating that food tourism occurs only when the food of a place acts as a primary motivator to travel to the destination.
Further, Hall and Sharples (2003) propose segmentation of food tourism based on the “importance of a special interest in food as a travel motivation” (p.11). The segmentation is based on the following criteria: 1) a high interest in food tourism in indicated by traveling to a destination with the primary motive of visiting a restaurant, market or winery, and all tourist activities are food related. They label this segment as gourmet/ cuisine/gastronomic tourism; 2) participation in food related activities as a part

35 of wider range of activities at the destination indicates a moderate interest. They term this segment as culinary tourism; 3) a low interest is indicated by participation in food related activities just out of curiosity or because ‘it is something different.’ They label this segment as the rural/urban tourist; 4) a segment that shows no interest in food related activities, or considers food subsidiary to all other interests as a tourist is the final segment. This segment is an unlabeled segment. Hall and Mitchell’s (2001), and Hall and
Sharples’ (2003) main contributions lie in providing an opertionalizable definition of food tourism and also in conceptualizing different types of food tourism based on one’s level of interest in food as a travel motivating factor.
Despite Hall and Sharples’ (2003) view that there is spectrum of food tourism activities and a food tourism continuum, apparently, there seems to be a mismatch between their definition of food tourism and their subsequent segmentation of food tourism. If, as they propose, food tourism is defined as tourism where food is the
“primary motivating factor for travel” (p.10), then segmentation of food tourism based on the criterion “interest in food as a travel motivation” (p.11) seems inappropriate and cannot be tested empirically.
This dissertation addresses this shortcoming by taking a broader approach in defining food tourism and using the frequency of participation in food related activities as a criterion to segment tourists. Modifying Hall and Mitchell’s (2001) definition, this dissertation redefines food tourism as a tourist’s food related activities at the destination, such as consuming ethnic and distinctive cuisines, visiting primary and secondary food producers, purchasing local food products or food pertinent products, and experiencing the characteristics of a unique food producing region. Thus, although all tourists may

36 participate in food tourism, it is the degree of participation which determines where the tourist stands along the ‘tourism interest continuum’ (Brotherton & Himmetoglu, 1997), with high participation indicating special interest tourism. This dissertation views culinary tourism as a special interest tourism, defining culinary tourism as special interest tourism where an interest in food and activities related to food is a major, if not primary reason influencing travel behavior.
Thus, the segmentation criterion is based on the degree of interest as observed through the frequency of activities and not on motivation, and the decisive factor of segmentation is not food tourism, but tourists participating in food tourism. By doing so, this dissertation hopes to address the inadequacies of Hall and Mitchell’s (2001) definition of food tourism and its apparent mismatch with the criterion used for Hall and
Sharples’ (2003) segmentation.
Other Important Contributions
Other important contributions to the understanding of food tourism come from
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (2004) and Shortridge (2004). According to Kirshenblatt –
Gimblett (2004), gastronomic or culinary tourism occurs “when food is the focus of travel, and itineraries are organized around cooking schools, wineries, restaurants, and food festivals” (p.xi). The restaurants are prime sites for culinary/ gastronomic tourism, and its raison d’etre lies in “the specificity of experiencing the food on the spot, in relation to season, ripeness, freshness, perishability, and the total world of which it is the part”(p. xiv).
Shortridge (2004) studies the popularity of ethnic theme towns and the role of their communities in providing the culinary experience of their native countries to

37 tourists. The popular culinary tourism activities in the New Glarus, Wisconsin (a Swiss settlement) and Lindsborg, Kansas (a Swedish settlement) include buying food and food products, cookbooks and cooking utensils-both traditional and modern- that have been imported from the county of origin, eating at food festivals, watching cooking demonstrations, sampling food, and collecting souvenir recipes. The hallmark of this type of tourism is the concerted efforts on the part of the ethnic community to provide an authentic experience, not only in terms of the food, but also by creating a landscape that resembles the country the ethnic community represents.
To synopsize, all these studies contribute to the understanding of food tourism by driving home two important points. For one, food tourism encompasses numerous classes of food-related activities, and has a multidimensional aspect to it. Secondly, there is a continuum of tourists based on their participation in food-related activities. That is, there are different categories of food tourists. These two conclusions provide the foundations to the formulation of the first two propositions of the dissertation:
Proposition I. Food Tourism is composed of different classes of activities.
Proposition II. Tourists can be classified into homogenous groups based on their participation in food tourism.

2.4.b Concepts that Explain Participation in Food Tourism
The food in tourism literature suggests the relevance of four concepts that influence participation in food tourism. The next section reviews literature pertinent to these four concepts that owe their origin to disparate fields such as food studies, social psychology, and consumer behavior.

38
2.4. b.1 Food Neophobia
The concept of food neophobia has been used widely in the food and nutrition literature to understand why people have the propensity to avoid or approach novel, unfamiliar, and foreign foods. Based on Otis' (1984) findings that a person’s willingness to taste new food is significantly and positively related to how adventurous one thinks he is, Pliner and Hobden, (1992) conceptualized food neophobia as a personal trait and defined it as “the reluctance to eat and/ or avoidance of novel foods.” Studies in food and nutrition have demonstrated significant gender and age differences regarding this trait, with men being more food neophobic than women, and older people more neophobic than younger people (Hobden & Pliner, 1995; Otis, 1984; Pliner, Eng, & Krishnan, 1995;
Pliner & Hobden, 1992; Pliner & Melo, 1997; Pliner, Pelchat, & Grabski, 1993; Ritchey,
Frank, Hursti, & Tuorila, 2003; Tuorila, Lahteenmaki, Pohjalainen, & Lotti, 2001).
Further, these studies have found that low exposure to new foods, perceived dangerousness of novel foods, and social influence are significant predictors of food neophobia. Food Neophobia and Food Tourism
According to Long (2004), food consumption is a dynamic process running along three axes: from the exotic to the familiar, from the inedible to the edible, and from the unpalatable to the palatable. In food / culinary tourism, there is usually a shift from the familiar to the exotic, where the exotic could be an ingredient, dish, eating style or preparation method of the host community. For food to function as a tourist attraction, it needs to fall sufficiently outside of the mundane and suitably inside the boundaries of what is palatable (Jochnowitz, 1998). In addition, the perception of what constitutes

39 exotic, inedible or unpalatable depends on personal tastes, personalities, cultural preferences and aesthetics.
Food neophobia is one such personal trait that has been proposed as a barrier for tourists to experience the local cuisines (Cohen & Avieli, 2004), affecting the food tourism experience (Mitchell & Hall, 2003). Local food might not be an attraction to many tourists because they are afraid of experimenting with novel foods and ingesting something strange (Cohen & Avieli, 2004). However, the empirical significance of food neophobia in explaining participation in food tourism remains untested.
Food borne diseases has been cited as a cause for concern by tourists traveling to developing countries, and “traveler’s diarrhea” is reported as the most common ailment
(MacLaurin, 2001). In a study of perceived risks of travel, Lepp and Gibson (2003) found strange food as being one of the risk factors for tourists. The study revealed that institutionalized tourists, the organized mass tourists, female tourists, and tourists with least experience in traveling abroad perceived strange food to be more of a risk.
The crucial role of food neophobia is illustrated in the literature by the following examples, each falling at the extreme ends of food consumption spectrum. On one extreme, there are the food neophilic tourists who demand for the exotic in dishes like cuitlacoche (made of corn fungus), and cactus worms, ant eggs, tacos of chapulines
(grasshoppers), when they travel to Mexico (Pilcher, 2004, p.78). At the other end of the spectrum, there are the adventurous but food neophobic backpackers, who though adventurous enough to trek the extremely dangerous terrain of the Himalayas, are too reluctant and fastidious to try the local Nepalese fare and carry along packaged toasts, pizzas, and apple pies (Cohen & Avieli, 2004, p.759). This implies that novelty-seeking

40 as a tourist motivational factor is not an all-pervading trait applicable to all of the tourist’s activities. Even though novelty-seeking may motivate a tourist to choose a destination or activities at the destination (Crompton, 1979; Lee & Crompton, 1992), it may not function within the realm of food.
From the destinations’ perspective, food neophobia is a major hurdle in increasing the demand for regionally produced food, as seen in Belisle’s (1983, 1984) case studies of the Caribbean Islands. The Caribbean economy, which survives on tourism, imports most of its food because the conservative eating habits of the sun and sand tourists prevent them from experiencing local dishes. This pattern seems to be recurring as evidenced by McAndrews' (2004) study on Hawaiian tourists, who despite showing interest in Hawaiian culture like Hula, fire-twirlers and the like, seem least interested in the local food, so much, that many a time the local food went untested.
As a result, destinations and restaurants have attempted to surmount the tourists’ neophobic tendencies by developing strategies such as renaming the exotic dishes, or translating it and putting it within American or Anglicized context (e.g. Khmichi as the
Korean pickle). Yet another strategy is the development of tourism-oriented culinary establishments (Cohen & Avieli, 2004), serving innovative and creative version of the local dishes that are transformed to suit the tourist palate. These function as a “culinary environmental bubble” (p.775) for the food neophobic tourists.
To sum up, food’s capacity to affect the tourist’s physical health makes it one of the risk elements of tourism. In addition, the inherent trait within a person to avoid novel foods plays a crucial factor in determining the extent of participation in food tourism. The

41 proposition arrived as a consequence of the literature review of the concept is stated below. Proposition III. Food neophobia is negatively related to food tourism.

2.4. b.2 Variety-seeking Tendency
The concept of variety-seeking is borrowed from the consumer behavior literature. It is defined as the consumer’s inherent desire for variety due to factors such as changes in tastes, changes in constraints, and changes in feasible alternatives (McAlister
& Pessemier, 1982). In general, the concept of variety-seeking is identified as an offshoot of the need for stimulation, and is acknowledged as an underlying explanatory variable for the consumption of hedonic products like food, vacations, entertainment gadgets, and the like (Ratner, Kahn, & Kahneman, 1999).
VanTrijp and Steenkamp (1992) define variety-seeking tendency with respect to food as “the factor that aims at providing variation in stimulation through varied food product consumption irrespective of the instrumental/ functional value of the food product alternatives.” Variety may be sought in the following conditions: 1) when there are changes in feasible set, that is, when the type of food that is normally consumed is not available; 2) when there are changes in constraints, such as, access to more money or restaurants; 3) when there are changes in tastes due to advertising; 4) when changes are sought as a goal in itself (McAlister & Pessemier, 1982). From a sociologist’s point of view, variety- seeking with respect to food is a manifestation of cultural experimentalism and a search for innovation in consumption (Warde, Martens & Olsen, 1999). Further, it

42 is considered a significant feature of contemporary food consumption habits (Gabaccia,
1998).
Variety-seeking Tendency and Food Tourism
In tourism literature where food is the focus of study, variety-seeking tendency towards food is seen as an important variable explaining tourist food consumption.
According to Shortridge (2004), the diversity of opportunities provided to the tourist to experience varieties of food is seen as the hallmark of food tourism. At the same time, the culinary tourists are characterized by their openness to variety (KirshenblattGimblett, 2004). A tourist’s variety-seeking tendency with respect to food is manifested in a demand for variety of culinary traditions, and/or a demand for variety within a culinary system (Molz, 2004; Reynolds, 1993).
Molz’s (2004) ethnographic study of diners at Thai restaurants evidences the demand for variety of culinary traditions as a form of variety-seeking tendency.
According to her, culinary tourists seeking ethnic dining experiences are set apart by their demand for variety rather than seeking authentic differences. The subjects under study not only went to Thai restaurants, but also frequently ate at Japanese, Korean, Caribbean,
Indian, Ethiopian, and several other ethnic restaurants. To these tourists, eating at a variety of restaurants was more pleasurable and a crucial factor in their overall culinary experience. Availability of a variety of culinary experiences notwithstanding, the importance of the presence of variety of dishes with reference to an indigenous culinary system is also important to the tourists (Reynolds, 1993). In his longitudinal study of the menu offerings at twenty-eight local restaurants in the island of Bali, Reynolds (1993) found

43 that the percentage of local Balinese dishes in tourist towns dropped from 52% of the total dishes available per restaurant in 1988 to 16% in the year 1992. More than half of the tourists interviewed complained about the lack of a wider selection of indigenous dishes and rated it as an important criterion in their rating of overall tourist experience in
Bali.
From a destination’s perspective, the availability of a variety of dishes and the presence of an array of ethnic restaurants that provide a multiplicity of culinary experiences are considered important attributes of a tourist destination (Nield, Kozak, &
LeGrys, 2000; Sparks, Bowen, & Klag, 2003). These contribute to the overall image and reputation of a destination, and ultimately the tourist’s satisfaction with the destination.
New York, London and San Francisco are examples of cities that have created a reputation of “foodie” destinations not just by being representative of any single regional cuisine or an iconic culinary system, but by the sheer variety of culinary cultures they offer. To summarize, literature suggests that the tourist’s variety-seeking tendency towards food is a form of cultural experimentation. Moreover, according to the literature, a destination’s ability to provide variety of culinary traditions along with a multiplicity of dishes within a culinary tradition, undoubtedly adds to its overall attraction and satisfaction as a holiday destination. Thus, tourism literature pertinent to food consumption shows that variety-seeking tendency towards food plays a crucial role in explaining participation in food related activities. The proposition arrived at reviewing literature pertinent to variety-seeking tendency is stated next.

44
Proposition IV. Variety-seeking tendency towards food is positively related to food tourism.

2.4.b.3 Hedonic Consumption
Hedonic consumption is a concept borrowed from the consumer behavior literature, and is defined as, “those facets of consumer behavior that relate to the multisensory, fantasy and emotive aspects of one’s experiences with the products” (Hirschman
& Holbrook, 1982, p.92). The hallmark of hedonically valuable experience lies in the aesthetic or the physical enjoyment it provides, resulting in increased arousal, heightened involvement, perceived freedom, fantasy fulfillment, and escapism (Bloch & Richins,
1983; Hopkinson & Pujari, 1999).
With respect to food, hedonic attitudes of consumption involve an emphasis on taste of food, a preference for cultural eating practices, a desire for complex, cultural dishes or a desire for elaborate and extravagant foods, and a focus on the cultural practice of eating food as well as the end benefits (LeBel, 2000; Wansink, Sonka, & Cheney,
2002, p.356). Further, it is not just purely a physiological sensation, such as the pleasure felt on having a rich dessert or drinking alcohol. It is also a social pleasure, which for example, occurs while having food and drinks with friends and family, emotional pleasure ( e.g. food that evoke pleasant memories), and intellectual pleasure, such as cooking a fine meal, appreciating finer foods, and consuming beverages (LeBel, 2000).
This is in contrast to the utilitarian attitudes of consumption, which are more goal oriented, task related and rational. These involve a focus on functional aspects of food, a preference towards simple cultural foods and dishes, a desire for practicality in food

45 consumption, and a focus on the end benefits of eating such as energy, calories or nutrition (Wansink, Sonka & Cheney, 2002, p.356). With respect to dining out, satisfying hunger, convenience, price, and efficiency of the service are indicators of utilitarian attitudes (Park, 2004).
According to Spangenberg, Voss, and Crowley (1997) both the utilitarian and the hedonic attitudes might operate on cognitive as well as affective levels. However, the cognitive element dominates the utilitarian consumption attitude whereas the hedonic attitude is dominated by affective element. Although, in general, the utilitarian attitudes and the hedonic attitudes towards food have well-defined set of universal attributes, one’s cultural background may sometimes define them. For example, diners at fast food restaurants in Korea considered the standardized and efficient appearance of franchised fast food exotic, and the fast food restaurants a fun place with novel ambience (Park,
2004) thereby showing a hedonic value to eating at fast food restaurants, and implying a cultural relativity to these attitudes.
Hedonic Consumption Attitude and Food Tourism
In the literature where one sees an interface of food and tourism, food is viewed as an element satisfying the sensation seeking need of the tourists, or something that provides peak experiences to the tourists. Thus, food forms a hedonic component in the overall tourism experience.
Analyzing the role of food in tourism, Boniface (2003) posits that the modern tourist is in a constant need for a ‘high’ and for immediate gratification. Food and drink provide sensory and tactile pleasure and satisfy that need more easily than any other tourist attraction. A special taste and sensation of unusual food and drink, the pleasure of

46 discovering a new food or dish all contribute to hedonic experiences in travel. Quan and
Wang (2004) extend this proposition by stating that experiencing food can be a peak experience provided the tourist considers the food of the destination an attraction and activities related to food form a major part of the tourist’s itinerary. More importantly, for food to provide peak tourist experiences, it should be in contrast to the tourist’s daily experiences, in terms of either the dishes or presentation of the meal or the ambience.
With respect to food tourism per se, Mitchell and Hall (2003) state that food tourism is hedonic in nature since food becomes an experiential rather than a functional aspect of travel experience. According to them, tourists are motivated to participate in food tourism because of their hedonic attitude towards food consumption and that the essence of food tourism lies in its ability to satisfy the sensation seeking attitude of the tourist. Further, they propose that the popularity of wine tourism is a classic example of the significance of the hedonic attitudes as a part of travel experience. In a similar vein,
Long (2004) states that the culinary tourist experiences the culinary ‘Other’ for the sake of experiencing it, and not out of the necessity of satisfying hunger. The pleasure derived is aesthetic in nature and stems from the consumption of food and not what food represents. From the destination’s perspective, it is the tourist’s hedonic attitudes towards food that makes local food a tourist attraction in its own right and as important as any other attraction of a destination. Moeran (1983) and Boniface(2001) contribute to this proposition by studying tourist brochures and destination advertisements respectively.
Moeran’s (1983) analysis of Japanese tourist brochures revealed that the emphasis of tourism experiences was gradually shifting from that concentrating on the “sights” to that

47 of tourist experiences that involved “participation with their own skins” (p.96). The brochures portrayed tourism as sensually more diverse. Tasting foreign food was depicted as one of the hedonic experiences tourists could participate in and the key words in the brochures centered on experiences and discovery as opposed to the passive and sedate sightseeing. Similarly, Boniface’s (2001) analysis of contemporary advertisements of tourist destinations revealed that there was a stress on the food and wine of the region as a part of the destinations’ positioning strategy. She postulates that our fascination at home with foreign food and wine, combined with the modern society’s emphasis on the aesthetic enjoyment of food forms a dynamic, which stimulates people to try out newer and more sensations when they travel. The advertisements promoting destinations’ food and wine are a part of travel experience reflects this trend.
To sum up, as tourism is developing into becoming more experience oriented, and as something that is more than just ‘gaze’ oriented (Urry, 2002), food has become a medium of such an experience-based tourism. When the tourist’s attitude towards food is hedonic rather than utilitarian, and the tourist views food as a part of the destinations attractions or ‘pull factors,’ food provides a pleasurable and memorable experience. Thus, experiencing the food of the destination becomes one of the motivations to travel, or at least a significant part of the tourist’s overall activities, and ultimately provides peak tourist experiences. This makes food tourism a natural consequence of hedonism (Telfer
& Hashimoto, 2003). The proposition arrived at from this review is presented below.
Proposition V. Hedonic consumption attitude towards food is positively related to food tourism.

48
2.4.b.4 Enduring Involvement with Food Related Activities
The concept of enduring involvement, used in the social psychology and marketing literatures for more than 45 years, is considered as an influential determinant of consumer behavior and as a mediator of purchases and participation (Havitz &
Dimanche, 1999). In the last decade, leisure, recreation and tourism researchers have identified this construct as an important variable that helps understand participation in leisure activities and tourists’ vacation behavior (Dimanche, Havitz & Howard 1991;
Havitz & Dimanche 1999; Kyle, et al, 2004; McIntyre & Pigram, 1992).
Owing to the large number of studies examining this concept, there are several definitions of involvement, both in consumer behavior and leisure and tourism studies. In general, leisure involvement is defined as “an unobservable state of motivation, arousal or interest towards a recreational activity or associated product, evoked by a particular stimulus or situation and has drive properties” (Havitz & Dimanche, 1999, p.123).
Despite the debates about the dimensionality of the concept, with very few exceptions (McQuarrie & Munson, 1987; Zaichkowsky, 1985), empirical evidence in leisure research strongly supports the conceptualization of involvement as a multi dimensional construct (Dimanche, Havitz, & Howard, 1991; Gahwiler & Havitz, 1998;
Havitz & Dimanche, 1997, 1999; Havitz, Dimanche, & Howard, 1993; Kerstetter &
Kovich, 1997; Kyle, Graefe, Manning, & Bacon, 2003; Kyle et al, 2004; Laurent &
Kapferer, 1985; McIntyre, 1989; McIntyre & Pigram, 1992; Wiley, Shaw, & Havitz,
2000). This construct has been attributed to personal values, ego-involvement, importance and risk perceptions, interest, excitement, and enthusiasm for product class,

49 activities, or information, in that these constitute facets of involvement influencing participation in a leisure activity and travel behavior patterns.
The most common dimensions of enduring involvement are importance pleasure, sign, risk importance, and risk probability (Laurent & Kapferer, 1985), and in the context of leisure include attraction, sign, centrality and risk (Havitz & Dimanche, 1999). Recent studies on leisure involvement have reported dimensions such as social bonding, identity affirmation, and identity expression, in addition to attraction and centrality (Kyle et al,
2004). These dimensions are of particular relevance to the current investigation because as discussed earlier in the review of sociology of food literature, food consumption deals with issues of identity expression, identity affirmation and social bonding.
Enduring Involvement and Food Tourism
In the food and tourism literature, involvement with food and food-related activities in daily life is seen as a predictor of participation in food tourism (Long, 2004;
Mitchell & Hall, 2003; Sharples, 2003). Thus, there is a connection between involvement and any special interest tourism, such as culinary tourism, in that the leisure activities enjoyed at home are pursued even while vacationing in the form of niche tourism activities (Brotherton & Himmetoglu, 1997). In the food tourism literature, the different dimensions of enduring involvement (attraction and centrality) are stated as predictors of participation in food tourism rather than enduring involvement per se.
Long (2004) states that culinary tourism highlights the complexity of tourist involvement in food consumption in the sense that even though it is a physiological

50 necessity, the culinary tourist perceives food as a social and cultural resource, and his involvement with food is related with those aspects rather than the physiological aspects.
Thus, attraction as a facet of enduring involvement drives participation in food tourism.
Centrality as a component of enduring involvement with food related activities is indicated by making these activities an essential part of overall lifestyle activities.
Examples of such activities are eating at ethnic restaurants, viewing televised cooking shows, cooking a range of styles of food at home, learning new techniques of food preparation, experimenting with a wide range of cuisines, or having a hobby related to food, such as collecting recipes and cookbooks (Long, 2004; Mitchell & Hall, 2003).
These again, are predictors of participation in food tourism.
By participating in food tourism, the tourists explore and reinforce their own identity and explore the identity of the ‘Other’. According to Wilson (2004), “…food’s declarative function and its ability to say something about the eater makes it a preeminent means of self expression” (p.250). Food is thus a doubly expressive medium of identity expression and identity affirmation. At the same time, sharing with a group of people, a food system that is not one’s own binds people by distinguishing the in-group from the out-group. In her ethnography of Americans eating at Thai restaurants, Molz
(2004) concludes that by participating in the culinary system of the ‘Other,’ Americans were validating their own individual identity and affiliating themselves with a particular
American identity, thus displaying social bonding- another dimension of enduring involvement .

51
Finally, according to Wilson (2004), culinary tourists attribute sign value to eating food in a multicultural setting and unconsciously or consciously use it as a means of status differentiation. They perceive experiencing local food and cuisines as important enough to make that a key part of their activities at the destination. The perceived sign value attributed by the consumer to the product (food) is one of the dimensions of involvement and is a significant stimulus in participation in food tourism.
To summarize, as tourism is becoming increasingly niche-oriented and activityoriented, tourists carry their interests over to their vacations and sometimes even select destinations that offer them opportunities to take part in their favorite activities.
Analogous to that, people who show an enduring involvement with food use it as a cultural and social resource around which they revolve their leisure activities. They are involved with food related activities at home so much that it assumes centrality or salience in their lives, stimulating them to participate in food related activities during the vacation. Furthermore, people who show enduring involvement with food and food related activities perceive food as a form of identity expression, identity affirmation and social bonding. As per the review of the concept, identity expression, identity affirmation, social bonding, sign value, and centrality are all facets of enduring involvement. The proposition arrived on reviewing the literature is presented next.
Proposition VI Enduring involvement with food related activities is positively related to food tourism.
Based on the propositions derived from the literature review, a conceptual framework for explaining participation in food tourism is illustrated in Figure 2.1

52

Food
Neophobia

Variety-Seeking
Tendency
Food
Tourism
Hedonic
Consumption
Attitudes

Enduring
Involvement

Figure 2.1: Proposed conceptual framework for explaining participation in food tourism

2.4.c Limitations of the Conceptual Framework
As with any conceptual framework, the conceptual framework proposed for this dissertation also suffers from inherent limitations. A discussion of the limitations of the proposed conceptual framework follows next.
Religious Beliefs and Participation in Food Tourism
Religious beliefs and value systems have been suggested to be influential in determining people’s food consumption patterns. This factor, which on a superficial level comes across as food neophobia, may actually be due to the religious beliefs and values that

53 often prevent tourists from trying new food. Hassan and Hall's study (2003) of Muslim tourists in New Zealand examines the role of religious beliefs in food consumption patterns. The researchers found that lack of Hallal food prevents most Muslim tourists from eating at restaurants while traveling and almost 55% of them prepare their own food. The demand for Hallal food by Muslim travelers is often overlooked by destinations. As a result, according to them, many destinations lose tourist revenues/ receipts to countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, which offer the tourists opportunities to consume food confirming to their religious belief system.
A few other studies, however, have shown that religious beliefs and other value systems are not very influential in preventing tourists from participating in the foodways of the other. Cohen and Avieli (2004) state that Israeli tourists are willing to be relaxed about the ‘Kashrut laws’ when they are traveling and are open to experiencing most local food, although unwilling to try culturally unacceptable foods like dog, cat, and reptile meat. Similarly, Rotkovitz's study (2004) on Jewish tourists suggests that even though they are likely to experience some kind of barrier when experimenting with unfamiliar foodways, there is a more psychological openness to experimentation because travel is transient in nature. The exotic in this case feels like a safe adventure, and religious beliefs and value systems may not be much of a hindrance to trying the local fare. Thus, the relevance of religious beliefs in explaining participation in food tourism has empirically shown mixed support and therefore is excluded from the conceptual framework.

54
Authenticity and Participation in Food Tourism
The second limitation of the conceptual framework is with respect to the concept of authenticity. The concept of authenticity has been a topic of extensive discourse in tourism studies as a tourist motivation and as an integral part of tourist experience
( Cohen, 1979,1988; Hughes, 1995; MacCanell, 1973; MacCannell, 1973,1976;
Moscardo & Pearce, 1986; Pearce & Moscardo, 1986; Turner & Manning, 1988; Wang,
1999). Similarly, in the study of foodways, authenticity has been used, widely and often contentiously, to understand social dynamics and identity construction through food consumption (Appadurai, 1986; Lu & Fine, 1995; Molz, 2004). According to Sharpley,
(1994), authenticity connotes “traditional culture and origin, sense of the genuine, and the real or the unique” (p.130). It is a concept that is especially relevant to heritage and cultural tourism as it pertains to the depiction of the ‘Other’ and the past.
In the literature where food is studied as a component of tourism, the concept of authenticity has been widely used (Alcock, 1995; Hughes, 1995; Jacobsen, 2000;
Kirshenblatt -Gimblett, 2004; Lu & Fine, 1995; Molz, 2004). However, this dissertation does not consider authenticity as a part of the conceptual framework for several reasons.
To begin with, authenticity is perceived as an objective reality (MacCanell, 1973,
1976) and is culturally and historically specific. With respect to food, the quest for authentic experiences cannot be seen as object related reality. Unlike a historical monument or a famous work of art in a museum, which has remained the same for centuries, cuisines are never static. They are constantly evolving and are a product of the current ecological, political, and economic conditions, thus being reshaped much like the culture itself (Bentley, 2004). Therefore, examining the quest for an objective

55 authenticity within the context of food tourism does not seem a logical and opertionalizable exercise.
Another way of looking at authenticity has been to view it as a socially constructed process (Cohen, 1988; Pearce & Moscardo, 1986). This perspective of authenticity perceives authenticity as an interactive process, where both the tourists and the tourism producers simultaneously negotiate in constructing authenticity. The tourists project authenticity onto the tourist objects, which is based on their expectations, images formed through media, their preferences, and what they believe is the authentic. At the same time, the tourism producers work to provide the tourists what they assume the tourists expect as the authentic. It is beyond the scope and the context of the dissertation to measure a socially constructed process such as authenticity, in which the tourist and the tourism producer have equivalent roles to play, by studying the tourist alone.
Particularly because this dissertation limits itself to social psychological concepts to explain food tourism and analyzes the food tourism purely from a demand side of the tourism system.
Lastly, ethnographic studies that have looked into authenticity as a motivation to take part in the foodways of the ‘Other,’ have shown that authenticity is not of paramount importance in the food experience (Lu & Fine, 1995; Molz, 2004). Tourists do not consider authenticity a crucial factor when choosing to dine at ethnic restaurants. Even though tourists are looking for the exotic and seeking authentic experience, it is not at the expense of palatability and acceptability.
Given these arguments, the concept of authenticity seems complex and contentious as a variable explaining participation in food tourism. Moreover, given the

56 complicated and multifaceted nature of this concept, empirically examining the role of authenticity in food tourism may be a topic in its own right for an academic thesis.
Hence, authenticity is not considered as a part of the proposed conceptual framework of this dissertation in examining food tourism.

2.5 Sociodemographic Status and Food Consumption
Socioeconomic and demographic statuses are one of the most commonly used variables to predict food consumption patterns. The term socioeconomic status refers to the level of the social and economic position of people within society as revealed by various indicators. The main social indicators used for most of the empirical studies are education, employment, type of job, and the commonly used economic indicator is annual household income. With respect to demographic status, the frequently used indicators are age, gender, and marital status.
Social theorists and empiricists studying food consumption have generally looked at the influence of socioeconomic and demographic variables on dining out, frequency of eating out, money spent on food at home and outside the home (Bourdieu, 1984; Germov
& Williams,1999; McCracken & Brandt, 1987; McIntosh, 1996; Erickson, 1996; Warde,
1992; Warde & Martens, 2000; Warde, Martens & Olsen, 1999).
According to Douglas (1984), a strong relationship exists between socioeconomic status and food consumption such that when people change social class they subsequently change their foods. Analyzing education’s influential role in food consumption patterns, Goody (1982) and Symons (1991) theorize that societies whose

57 populations have higher education have more differentiated cuisines. Education and cuisine reflexivity are mutually reinforcing, with reflexivity defined as thinking, discussing, and experimenting about food.
With respect to social indicators empirical studies have shown positive significant association between education and eating out, eating at ethnic restaurants and the number of places chosen for dining out (McCracken & Brandt, 1987; Warde
&Martens, 2000; Warde, Martens & Olsen 1999). Employment status as a social variable showed strong association with the white collar occupational group having exposure to a wider number of restaurants (Warde, Martens & Olsen, 2000) and eating at better or elite restaurants (Erickson, 1996). Interestingly enough, Erickson (1996) found that there were no significant difference between different occupational groups and eating at fast food chains. Household income is positively associated with the frequency of dining out, consumption at ethnic restaurants, and breadth of exposure to ethnic restaurants
(McCracken & Brandt, 1987, Warde & Martens, 2000; Warde, Martens & Olsen 1999).
With respect to the influence of demographic variables on dining out, marital status showed a significant association, with married people eating out more often (Smallwood,
Blisard, & Blaylock, 1991). Age showed a significant positive association with respect to dining out, consumption at ethnic restaurants, and exposure to a wider variety of ethnic restaurants (McCracken & Brandt, 1987, Warde & Martens, 2000; Warde, Martens &
Olsen 1999).

58
Socioeconomic, Demographic Status and the Tourist’s Food Consumption
With respect to tourist food consumption, studies that have looked into the food consumption of tourists have showed a strong association between socioeconomic status and demographics with the tourist’s food consumption patterns.
According to Cohen and Avieli (2004), even though tourism has expanded into the lower and lower middle classes in the Western society, when it comes to food consumption they possess conservative tastes. Their exposure to foreign foods at home is not substantial unless a food has reached the status of a world cuisine. This suggests that there is a possibility of an association between socio-economic background and tourist consumption of local food.
Smith (1983) and Zelinsky (1985) show empirical evidence of this association in their respective studies that analyze the geographical distribution of restaurants. The general socio-economic status, the level of affluence, education of the community, and a high turnover of tourists are the factors affecting the distributions of ethnic restaurants.
Thus, an educated, urban community with a considerable discretionary income causes a growth of diverse restaurants.
The importance of socio-economic variables has been studied extensively in wine tourism (Carmichael, 2001; Charters & Ali-Knight, 2002; Dodd & Bigotte, 1997;
Williams & Dossa, 2001). These studies have provided empirical evidence of the wine tourist as a relatively well-educated person belonging to the professional or managerial class. Similarly, Cai, Hong, & Morrison's study (1995) on tourist’s food consumption (in

59 terms of expenditures), showed that occupation was a significant factor, and education was the most important predictor for a tourist’s expenditure on food at the destination.
Though income had a positive association with the tourist’s expenditure on food,
Cai, Hong and Morrison (1995) found that expenditure was income inelastic. Studies in wine tourism also show a similar association, with income being one of the best predictors of participation in wine tourism (Carmichael, 2001; Dodd and Bigotte, 1997;
Williams & Dossa, 2001).
With respect to demographic variables, Cai, Hong and Morrison’s study (1995) found that the age group 25-34 spent less on food compared to tourists over 65 years, and married tourists spent more on food than single tourists. In the studies concerning wine tourism, Carmichael (2001) found the majority of the Niagara wine tourists to be between the ages of 31-70 years, while Williams and Dossa (2001) found wine tourists of
British Columbia to be relative younger than the non-wine tourist.
To conclude, all these empirical studies reveal the significance of socio-economic and some demographic variables in food consumption away from home. The importance of these variables is also seen in tourism studies and the special interest market of wine tourism. Tourism is a leisure activity and is more or less dependent on discretionary income. Education plays a significant role in increasing one’s breadth of knowledge and skills, including leisure skills. Further, tourists who travel for food or wine view it as an investment in gaining more knowledge. Thus, overall, income and education are the most significant predictors of the tourist’s food consumption, along with age, marital status,

60 and occupation group showing sporadic instances of being significant predictors. All these findings lead to the final set of propositions for the dissertation.
Proposition VII: Sociodemographic variables influence participation in food tourism. 2.6 Synopsis of the Chapter
This chapter has reviewed the literature on globalization theory and the cultural capital theory as theoretical foundations for explaining food tourism. This was followed by a review of tourism literature that has focused on food with the objective of answering the research questions posed in Chapter One. The review also resulted in the formulation of propositions as the foundation for the hypotheses and the conceptual framework of the current dissertation. Finally, previous empirical research on the relevance of socioeconomic and demographic variables in explaining food consumption was explored. The next chapter presents the null and the alternative hypotheses for each of the research questions of the dissertation and the research methods applied to test these hypotheses.

CHAPTER THREE
3. RESEARCH METHODS
This chapter explains the methods used to address this dissertation’s research questions. First, the null and the alternative hypotheses are stated for each of the research questions of the dissertation. The construction of the survey instrument is described next, followed by the operationalization of variables, and a discussion on pre-testing the survey. The next section examines the unit of analysis, describes the population under study and the sampling design. Finally, the data collection process and the data analysis is discussed. 3.1 Presentation of the Hypotheses
The hypotheses are stated sequentially as they relate to the research questions of this dissertation presented in Chapter One. Both the null and the alternate hypotheses are stated for each of the research questions.
Research Question 1: What are the underlying dimensions of food tourism?
H1: 1a Food tourism is not composed of multiple dimensions.
H1: 1b Food tourism is composed of multiple dimensions.

62
Research Question 2: What variables explain participation in food tourism?
H2:1a Food neophobia is not related to any of the dimensions of food tourism.
H2:1b Food neophobia is negatively related to at least one dimension of food tourism. H2:2a Variety-seeking tendency is not related to any of the dimensions of food tourism. H2:2b Variety-seeking tendency is positively related to at least one dimension of food tourism.
H2:3a Hedonic consumption attitude towards food is not related to any of the dimensions of food tourism.
H2:3b Hedonic consumption attitude towards food is positively related to at least one dimension of food tourism.
H2:4a Enduring involvement with food related activities is not related to any of the dimensions of food tourism.
H2:4b Enduring involvement with food related activities is positively related to at least one dimension of food tourism.

Research Question 3: Are there any differences in participation in food tourism with respect to age, gender, marital status, occupation, education, annual income?
H 3: 1a: There is no significant difference in tourists’ participation in any of the dimensions of food tourism and their age.
H 3: 1b: There is a significant difference in tourists’ participation in at least one dimension of food tourism and their age.

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H 3: 2a: There is no significant difference in tourists’ participation in any of the dimensions of food tourism and their gender.
H 3: 2b: There is a significant difference in tourists’ participation in at least one dimension of food tourism and their gender.
H 3: 3a: There is no significant difference in tourists’ participation in any of the dimensions of food tourism and their education.
H 3: 3b: There is a significant difference in tourists’ participation in at least one dimension of food tourism and their education.
H 3: 4a: There is no significant difference in tourists’ participation in any of the dimensions of food tourism and their marital status.
H 3: 4b: There is a significant difference in tourists’ participation in at least one dimension of food tourism and their marital status.
H 3: 5a: There is no significant difference in tourists’ participation in any of the dimensions of food tourism and their employment status.
H 3: 5b: There is a significant difference in tourists’ participation in at least one dimension of food tourism and their employment status.
H 3: 6a: There is no significant difference in tourists’ participation in any of the dimensions of food tourism and their annual household income.
H 3: 6b: There is a significant difference in tourists’ participation in at least one dimension of food tourism and their annual household income.

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Research Question 4: Can tourists be segmented into homogenous groups based on their participation in food tourism?
H 4:1a Tourists cannot be segmented into homogenous clusters based on their participation in food tourism.
H 4:1b Tourists can be segmented into homogenous clusters based on their participation in food tourism.

Research Question 5: What variables predict membership in each of the food tourist clusters (formed as a result of the classification of tourists based on their participation in food tourism)?
H5:1a Food neophobia does not predict membership in any of the food tourist segments. H5:1b Food neophobia predicts membership in one or more food tourist clusters. H5: 2a Variety-seeking tendency does not predict membership in any of the food tourist clusters.
H4:2b Variety-seeking tendency predicts membership in one or more food tourist clusters. H4: 3a Hedonic attitude towards food does not predict membership in any food tourist clusters.
H4: 3b Hedonic attitude towards food predicts membership in one or more food tourist clusters.

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H4: 4a Enduring involvement with food related activities does not predict membership in any of the food tourist clusters.
H4: 4b Enduring involvement with food related activities predicts membership in one or more food tourist clusters.

Research Question 6: Is there an association between the food tourist clusters and age, gender, marital status, occupation, education, and annual income of the tourists?
H 6: 1a: There is no significant association between the food tourist clusters and the age of the tourists.
H 6: 1b: There is a significant association between the food tourist clusters and the age of the tourists.
H 6: 2a: There is no significant association between the food tourist clusters and the gender of the tourists.
H 6: 2b: There is significant association between the food tourist clusters and the gender of the tourists.
H 6: 3a: There is no significant association between the food tourism clusters and education of the tourists.
H 6: 3b: There is a significant association between the food tourism clusters and the education of the tourists.
H 6: 4a: There is no significant association between the food tourist clusters and the marital status of the tourists.
H 6: 4b: There is a significant association between the food tourist clusters and the marital status of the tourists.

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H 6: 5a: There is no significant association between the food tourist clusters and the occupation of the tourists.
H 6: 5b: There is a significant association between the food tourist clusters and the occupation of the tourists.
H 6: 6a: There is no significant association between the food tourist clusters and the annual household income of the tourists.
H 6: 6b: There is a significant association between the food tourist clusters and the annual household income of the tourists.

3.2 Questionnaire Construction
This dissertation employed a mail survey to collect data. The questionnaire consisted of six sections. The first section measured the frequency of the tourist’s participation in food related activities at a destination. The second section measured respondents’ varietyseeking tendency towards food, followed by food neophobia in section three. The fourth section measured respondents’ enduring involvement with food related activities, while section five measured hedonic attitude towards food. The final section of the questionnaire measured the respondents’ demographic and socioeconomic status. The survey combined unipolar scale, Likert type scales and semantic differential scales.
The Human Subjects Committee of Clemson University reviewed and approved the survey instrument. As with most academic research, the participants’ individual responses were confidential and anonymous. Next, the process of constructing the questionnaire is discussed.

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3.2.a Pilot Test of the Survey
Three pilot studies were conducted in March 2004 to test the survey and methods of analysis. The main purpose of the pilot studies was to validate the items generated as indicators of food tourism.
For the first pilot study, an online survey with the previously mentioned six sections was posted on travel websites (Lonely Planet and Rough Guides Community).
The section of the questionnaire that measured frequency of participation in food tourism had fifteen items indicative of food tourism. This questionnaire also had an open-ended section asking respondents whether they faced any problems while completing the questionnaire and whether there were any ambiguities with respect to any items on the questionnaire. The first pilot study resulted in a sample of fifty–seven (N=57). The analysis resulted in re-wording of the instructions and changes in the structure of the questions on items that were either incorrectly understood, or showed some systematic error. The second pilot study was an on-site survey administered on tourists visiting
New Orleans. Sites which had a very high tourist visibility were selected, and tourists were intercepted systematically (N= 63). The tourists were timed on the survey and were asked for their feedback. The third pilot study was conducted on visitors to the annual
PGA golf tournament at Hilton Head, South Carolina. Hundred surveys along with a business reply envelope were randomly placed on visitors’ cars. The response rate for this survey was 35 %. The survey was edited once more based on the suggestions of the respondents and after some more literature review, the final pilot study was conducted.

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The final pilot study was administered on students (N=42), who had been on a class trip to New Orleans. Once again, the respondents were timed, as one of the concerns voiced by the respondents of the second pilot study was the length of the survey.

3.2.b Operationalization of the Dependent
Variable: Participation in Food Tourism
The first and critical step in measuring ‘participation in food tourism’ was to conceive a precise and detailed operationalization of food tourism within its theoretical context. Food tourism was operationalized based on existing research, researcher judgment, tourism educators, the respondents of the pilot studies, and the definition of food tourism proposed in Chapter One. The approach used was a deductive one and exploratory in nature.
After an extensive examination of the pertinent literature and three pilot studies, twenty-nine items were generated that were indicative of food tourism. As mentioned earlier, the creation of item pool went through an iterative process of exploratory factor analysis after every pilot study. The item pool representing drinks and beverages was added after the second pilot study. This was based on suggestions from the tourists that consuming local beverages was an important component of food related activities at the destination. Thus, the twenty-nine items that were generated to operationalize food tourism represented each content area or the component of the proposed definition of food tourism and were proportional to their importance in the literature. The major categories of food tourism were:
a) eating at places serving local, regional or distinctive cuisines;

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b) visiting the primary or secondary producers;
c) visiting food festivals and specific locations for tasting and/or experiencing the attributes of specialist food production region;
d) experiencing a particular type of food, or the desire to taste the dishes of a particular chef;
e) purchasing of food and food related products to make it a part of daily life, or as memorabilia; f) consuming local drinks.
Participation in food tourism was operationalized as a continuous variable. In leisure and recreation studies, the leisure activity scales constructed to measure participation in leisure activities typically use unipolar scales. (Agnew & Peterson, 1989;
Bixler, 1994; Kelly, 1996; Yin, Katims, & Zapata, 1999; Yu, 1980). In addition, for the unipolar scales, normally the respondents answer the frequency of their participation from choices such as never, seldom and frequently (Spector, 1992). Following that tradition, the respondents of the current investigation were asked how often they took part in the list of food related activities while they were traveling for pleasure. The twentynine items were placed on a five point unipolar frequency scale with choices of 1= never,
2=rarely, 3= sometimes, 4=frequently, and 5= always. Table 3.1 displays the list of 29 items generated to measure food tourism.

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Table 3.1: Twenty-nine Items Generated to Measure Food Tourism
_____________________________________________________________________
1. Dine at places where food is prepared with respect to local tradition
2. Eat at restaurants where only locals eat
3. Attend a cooking school
4. At the destinations, I prepare food unique to the area I am visiting
5. Visit wineries
6. Purchase local food at the roadside stands
7. Dine at restaurants serving distinctive cuisines
8. Dine at restaurants serving regional specialties
9. Sample local foods
10. Eat at food festivals
11. Purchase local products to take back home
12. Buy cookbooks with local recipes to take back home
13. Buy local kitchen equipments to take back home
14. Dine at high quality restaurants
15. Go to restaurants just to taste the dishes of a particular chef
16. Make an advance reservation to dine at a specific restaurant
17. Consume local beverages and drinks
18. Observe a cooking demonstration
19. Visit a local farmer's market
20. Dine at themed restaurants
21. Dine at chain restaurants
22. Dine at fast food outlets

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23. Go to local brewpubs
24. Visit a brewery
25. Buy familiar pre-cooked food from supermarket
26. Prepare food at the place I am staying
27. Eat at places serving food I am familiar with
28. Eat at places that serve food that conforms to my belief system
29. Visit a food processing facility
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3.2.c Operationalization of the Independent Variables
To measure the respondent characteristics on the four independent variables, scales with established psychometric properties were used. Following is a detailed discussion on each of the independent variable and their operationalization.
Food neophobia
The independent variable food neophobia was measured by the food neophobia
Scale (FNS) constructed by Pliner and Hobden (1992). The FNS is a one-dimensional scale with ten items. This scale has demonstrated a reliability ranging typically from 0.80.9 (Hobden & Pliner, 1995; Otis, 1984; Pliner, Eng, & Krishnan, 1995; Pliner &
Hobden, 1992; Pliner & Melo, 1997; Pliner, Pelchat, & Grabski, 1993; Ritchey, Frank,
Hursti, & Tuorila, 2003; Tuorila, Lahteenmaki, Pohjalainen, & Lotti, 2001). According to
Pliner and Hobden (1992), studies have shown it to be significantly and positively related

72 to anxiety, general neophobia, and the experience seeking subscale of the Sensation
Seeking Scale (Zuckerman,1979).
Ritchey, Frank, Hursti, and Tuorila, ( 2003) in their study aimed at determining the validity of FNS conducted a cross-national comparison of the FNS using confirmatory factor analysis. They recommended deleting items # 5 and # 7 of the FNS as they do not seem to fit the overall scale. However, since theirs is the only study that has recommended this, and to avoid any kind of error in measurement, all the ten items from the original scale have been included in this dissertation. Table 3.2 displays the list of the items on the food neophobia scale. The items are related on a five point Likert-type scale with response categories labeled as follows: 1 =Strongly Disagree, 2= Disagree, 3=
Unsure, 4=Agree, 5= Strongly Agree. Items with (R) were recoded before analysis.
Table 3.2: Items on the Food Neophobia Scale

1. I am constantly sampling new and different foods. (R)
2. I don’t trust new foods.
3. If I don’t know what is in a food, I won’t try it.
4. I like food from different countries. (R)
5. Ethnic food looks too weird to eat.
6. At dinner parties, I will try a new food. (R)
7. I am afraid to eat things I have never had before.
8. I am very particular about the foods I will eat.
9. I will eat almost anything (R)
10. I like to try new ethnic restaurants (R)
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Variety-seeking Tendency with Respect to Food
Variety-seeking tendency with respect to food (variety-seeking, hereafter) is measured using the VARSEEK scale constructed by (VanTrijp & Steenkamp, 1992).
This scale is specifically designed within the context of food consumption, and is not a personality trait that could be generalized across products. At the same time, varietyseeking is an attitudinal characteristic of the consumer and not his purchase history. The scale has eight items and shows a reliability coefficient of 0.90. It has demonstrated a high degree of stability, with a stability coefficient for the composite scores being
0.81(p